My secondary school experience has influenced me by giving me the opportunity to become an advocate for the causes that I believe. I was able to do this because of the influence that the middle school experience had on me, and the opportunities my high school experience offered me. I would not be the person I am today if not for these experiences and opportunities.
Throughout much of my middle school experience my goal like many other students was to remain as anonymous as possible and to avoid the spotlight. Unfortunately this nearly impossible when you are 6 feet tall and in middle school I was noticeable that I had to deal with that. While middle school was not the most enjoyable educational experience, it introduced me to a variety of concepts and issues that I would have to deal with for the rest of my educational experience. Middle school more than anything else taught me that I had to speak to, argue with and question whether or not adults knew as much as I thought they did. This questioning came to be very important in my future endeavors but for now it served only to distinguish me as the crazy one who would ask all questions. In addition to questioning middle school taught me the importance of leadership and the responsibilities that that entails. Later that year all the middle school students worked on a project called project citizen. This project is designed to push middle schoolers to their limits; it combined all the aspects of all the skills that I would find so valuable in high school into one multi-month project. This project often makes the difference between passing and failing eighth grade. The project requires a group of middle school students generally haven't worked together in the past to find the problem and produce a viable solution. The teachers adopted a laissez-faire approach to controlling the class and let the students sink or swim on their own. This forced me to work on an important project with no distinct timeline and pull together a variety of skills that many of us have rarely used . Fortunately we as a group we pulled together creating timelines, and playing off each other strengths in the end we came in first in our school and third in the state. These experiences with project citizen in the variety of others that I do not have space to record thoroughly influenced my experiences in middle school and set the solid foundation for my success in high school.
As I entered high school things changed sports were not only way you could distinguish yourself. While sports were one way that I had distinguished myself no longer felt obliged to put all my efforts into sports I was able to pursue challenging classes, and took on additional opportunities when they present themselves. I became involved in special education having known some people and gains experience in the program. With their help I was able to gain a great deal of experience in assistive technologies over time and learn, and gain more experience than my teachers. So as freshman year continued I was being asked to teach other students how to use these technologies. The technologies ranged from audio recordings of textbooks, to speech to text programs. All of them were uniquely different from the other academic programs I used to.
In addition to the technology I also assumed leadership roles within the class and within the school. Within the class I served as president, vice president and president again. All of these roles culminated in my election to service student representative on our school board. This is position where there is strong competition and high expectations for the holder. While serving on the school board I had some of my greatest successes in most depressing failures. During my time on the board it was a contentious and difficult budget year. That year we would inevitably face serious budget cuts the question was where those cuts going to come from, I was lobbying for them to come from administrative pay rather than eliminate the teaching positions that made such a difference to my life. I did all of this while the administrators were sitting at the school board meetings and one half community was looking on either in the room at the time or over the local cable channel that aired every meeting. In addition to my success limiting the cuts to teachers I had some failures, during my time on the school board I was charged to give voice the student’s issues. A few weeks before the final budget was to be put out a letter was released detailing some inappropriate facts about the school some inaccurate information and most horrifying information about the personal lives of some students that was absolutely not connected to the school and have no place in a budget vote but it was made an issued by a group calling themselves the Plainfield Tax Association. This group released the names of none of its members, until one appeared at one meeting and I informed her what horrible thing she had done to the Twinfield community, how she should apologize to the community at larg, that her actions were intolerable, inappropriate, disrespectful, and utterly irrelevant to the current budget proceedings. She then felt comfortable enough standing up screaming that I was most disrespectful student she'd ever met. She waited by the door for me and heckled me all the way to my car. In addition to these opportunities for leadership and empowerment I was also given opportunities to make an impact on the state level. I was selected to serve on the commission that was sanctioned to rewrite Vermont's policy framework for transformation. Together we collaborated and produced a document of some 200 pages that look at every aspect and every facet of Vermont's educational system. The commission redrafted policy looking at the skills and challenges our students need to meet the future, questioning the old practices, and envisioning a new future. This was an amazing opportunity but I most grateful for the opportunity to work with 16 of the most amazing people I've ever met, driven, well educated adults who were both willing to accept my limited expertise and my constant questioning.
All of my high school and middle school experiences combined put me here before you now. I'm grateful for all the opportunities I received, the challenges I faced, the disgruntled old ladies and my inspiring teachers who helped me achieve all that I have achieved. What I have done could not have been done by me alone it was done with the help and support my family, many of my teachers, my harshest critics, and the best friends all played a part and I would've had none of the experiences or interactions with many of these people did not bend the course my educational experience it taken.
Throughout much of my middle school experience my goal like many other students was to remain as anonymous as possible and to avoid the spotlight. Unfortunately this nearly impossible when you are 6 feet tall and in middle school I was noticeable that I had to deal with that. While middle school was not the most enjoyable educational experience, it introduced me to a variety of concepts and issues that I would have to deal with for the rest of my educational experience. Middle school more than anything else taught me that I had to speak to, argue with and question whether or not adults knew as much as I thought they did. This questioning came to be very important in my future endeavors but for now it served only to distinguish me as the crazy one who would ask all questions. In addition to questioning middle school taught me the importance of leadership and the responsibilities that that entails. Later that year all the middle school students worked on a project called project citizen. This project is designed to push middle schoolers to their limits; it combined all the aspects of all the skills that I would find so valuable in high school into one multi-month project. This project often makes the difference between passing and failing eighth grade. The project requires a group of middle school students generally haven't worked together in the past to find the problem and produce a viable solution. The teachers adopted a laissez-faire approach to controlling the class and let the students sink or swim on their own. This forced me to work on an important project with no distinct timeline and pull together a variety of skills that many of us have rarely used . Fortunately we as a group we pulled together creating timelines, and playing off each other strengths in the end we came in first in our school and third in the state. These experiences with project citizen in the variety of others that I do not have space to record thoroughly influenced my experiences in middle school and set the solid foundation for my success in high school.
As I entered high school things changed sports were not only way you could distinguish yourself. While sports were one way that I had distinguished myself no longer felt obliged to put all my efforts into sports I was able to pursue challenging classes, and took on additional opportunities when they present themselves. I became involved in special education having known some people and gains experience in the program. With their help I was able to gain a great deal of experience in assistive technologies over time and learn, and gain more experience than my teachers. So as freshman year continued I was being asked to teach other students how to use these technologies. The technologies ranged from audio recordings of textbooks, to speech to text programs. All of them were uniquely different from the other academic programs I used to.
In addition to the technology I also assumed leadership roles within the class and within the school. Within the class I served as president, vice president and president again. All of these roles culminated in my election to service student representative on our school board. This is position where there is strong competition and high expectations for the holder. While serving on the school board I had some of my greatest successes in most depressing failures. During my time on the board it was a contentious and difficult budget year. That year we would inevitably face serious budget cuts the question was where those cuts going to come from, I was lobbying for them to come from administrative pay rather than eliminate the teaching positions that made such a difference to my life. I did all of this while the administrators were sitting at the school board meetings and one half community was looking on either in the room at the time or over the local cable channel that aired every meeting. In addition to my success limiting the cuts to teachers I had some failures, during my time on the school board I was charged to give voice the student’s issues. A few weeks before the final budget was to be put out a letter was released detailing some inappropriate facts about the school some inaccurate information and most horrifying information about the personal lives of some students that was absolutely not connected to the school and have no place in a budget vote but it was made an issued by a group calling themselves the Plainfield Tax Association. This group released the names of none of its members, until one appeared at one meeting and I informed her what horrible thing she had done to the Twinfield community, how she should apologize to the community at larg, that her actions were intolerable, inappropriate, disrespectful, and utterly irrelevant to the current budget proceedings. She then felt comfortable enough standing up screaming that I was most disrespectful student she'd ever met. She waited by the door for me and heckled me all the way to my car. In addition to these opportunities for leadership and empowerment I was also given opportunities to make an impact on the state level. I was selected to serve on the commission that was sanctioned to rewrite Vermont's policy framework for transformation. Together we collaborated and produced a document of some 200 pages that look at every aspect and every facet of Vermont's educational system. The commission redrafted policy looking at the skills and challenges our students need to meet the future, questioning the old practices, and envisioning a new future. This was an amazing opportunity but I most grateful for the opportunity to work with 16 of the most amazing people I've ever met, driven, well educated adults who were both willing to accept my limited expertise and my constant questioning.
All of my high school and middle school experiences combined put me here before you now. I'm grateful for all the opportunities I received, the challenges I faced, the disgruntled old ladies and my inspiring teachers who helped me achieve all that I have achieved. What I have done could not have been done by me alone it was done with the help and support my family, many of my teachers, my harshest critics, and the best friends all played a part and I would've had none of the experiences or interactions with many of these people did not bend the course my educational experience it taken.